[4] Relatione di Polonia (1598), quoted by Ranke (App. No. 66 to his History of the Popes). The same Nuncio says the Poles confessed to him that they preferred a weak monarch to an able one.
[5] The whole of the country called Prussia once belonged to Poland. Part of it, after being lost in the eleventh century, eventually came into the hands of the Elector of Brandenburg, who acknowledged the nominal suzerainty of Poland; the other part—Polish Prussia—was not lost till the eighteenth century.
[6] See Dr. South’s letter to Dr. Edward Pococke, Hebrew lecturer at Oxford, describing his travels in Poland. (p 71.) He mentions that he had heard them make this remark: and it is curious that his letter bears date Dec. 16th, 1677—six years before the relief of Vienna.
[7] This is denied by Salvandy, Histoire du Roi Jean Sobieski, vol. ii. p. 52, ed. 1876, though he has elsewhere admitted it by implication (vol. i. p. 402-3).
[8] The generals had no seat in the Senate by virtue of their office, but the king always made them palatines or castellans. Daleyrac, Polish Manuscripts or Secret History of the reign of John Sobieski, ch. i. p. 9.
[9] Daleyrac, ch. i. p. 34.
[10] The first was simply “veto,” the second “veto, sisto activitatem.”
[11] They were always prolonged, however, when public business was pressing.
[12] This castellan ranked even above all the palatines, and headed the Pospolite. The story is that in an important battle the palatine of Cracow ran away, while the castellan stood his ground, and their rank was thus reversed. (Coyer, Histoire de Sobieski, p. 69, 8vo ed.)
[13] The Abbé Coyer makes her his daughter; but he is wrong. The daughter of Zolkiewski married into the family of Danilowicz, and was the mother of Theophila. (Salvandy, vol. i. 145-147.)